The technical mumbo-jumbo below is irrelevant. The only reason any of these photos might be worth the paper on which they are printed is because I FARTed profusely before I pressed the shutter, and then carefully dodged, burned and cropped as I printed the negatives to ensure that the images said whatever they had to say as clearly and as simply as possible. The equipment and cameras had nothing to do with it; 100-year old equipment could have done this all.

As the world's most read and most influential camera reviewer, you might have gathered that I can borrow anything I want at any time for free, which is how I write so many Reviews, so why on Earth did I choose to use equipment from the 1950s for serious shooting?

Simple: when I dream about what camera I find most pleasant to use on a serious photo trip, it's always the LEICA M3. The LEICA M3 gets out of my way so that I can see my pictures, and also because I get superior results to anything from Nikon or Canon, digital or 35mm, because of superior LEICA optics. The M3 enables not just technical supremacy, but most importantly, by getting out of the way with a clean, simple viewfinder and no menus, power switches or any other irrelevant BS, allows me to concentrate and compose undistracted, enabling me to shoot with an incredibly high hit rate. Look at the frame numbers; I only needed two rolls of T-Max for this entire long weekend! North Coast Photo (NCPS) processed and scanned these whopping two rolls.

Once I had them ready to print in Aperture, I exported the files as JPGs, did any other mechanical work needed in Photoshop CS5, and ran them through my usual Photoshop Action to resize, sharpen, brand and save-for-web as seen here. The black-and-white prints were split-toned using the "Bl 404 WmGray 401 WmGray" option.

22 February, 2011, Tuesday

Today I drove from our new home in Reno, Nevada, and stopped overnight in Sacramento, California on the way to Yosemite.